Hardware Platforms and Registry Questions

[romeotheriault]

Hi, I'm new to the whole msi thing but I read a Microsoft article (a little dated) that said that you should create unique msi packages for different hardware platforms. For example one package for 50 Dell Optiplex 240's and another package for 50 Toshiba 8000's. Is this true?

Also, is there an automated way to find out what registry keys an application has installed? Or do we have to find all the keys an application may have installed? If the later is true could someone point me to a good article on where to find Applications registry keys.

Thank you very much.

Romeo

[Ionut]

Hi,

"Hardware platform" refers to the processor architecture (Alpha, Intel, Itanium etc). The Alpha platform is not supported by Windows Installer version 1.1 or later. Windows Installer sets the "Intel" Property to the numeric processor level when running on an Intel processor, as well as when running on an x64 processor. The "Intel64" Property is defined only when running on an Itanium processor (not on a 64-bit extended processor).

In Advanced Installer, you can select the package type that will created in the Install Parameters page ("Package Type" combobox).

Regarding your second question, you can use "Regmon" from Sysinternals, an excellent (and free) registry monitoring utility. It can be downloaded from:
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html

Regards,
Ionut